Building blocks of our inadequacies

It was all a lie. As youngsters we were told that if we learned how to build a sentence, then a paragraph, and finally a story, we would always have good work. The world will always need a competent writer, our teachers and parents said.

In hindsight, we should've learned how to build houses. If the money in the gold rush of the '90s was made by the schemers and the charlatans selling the vapor of the Internet, the new class to envy are those who build: the glorious carpenters, the sublime plumbers, the industrious electricians, the gifted house painters.

In this house-crazy market, the services they provide are red hot. Just try to get a mason to work on your place in June.

Jimmy came by the other day. I was so happy to see him I almost leaped into his arms. Jimmy looked at my leaky old chimney with the bricks askew, nodded, and said half-heartedly: ''Maybe October."

You see, Jimmy has a long wait list and he's going to Italy on vacation, for the month of August. Do you know anyone with a desk job, who wraps the noose that is the tie around the neck every day, who can afford to take a month off this summer? Not me.

The reality is, America is divided along class lines. The rise of the Home Improvement Store That Is As Large As A Football Field was supposed to democratize the home improvement process. Now, homeowners have access to the same products and prices as the professionals.

But what most homeowners still don't have are the skills. This is a particularly bitter reality for me. As a child, I returned home from sixth-grade shop class with a shoeshine box I made with my own two hands. Until that point, my mother had filled me with the tomfoolery that I would be good at whatever I did.

My shoeshine box was pathetic, and I knew it. Nothing was straight. Nothing was smooth. It looked more like a breadbox that had been run over by the pie bus than a shoeshine kit. When I asked my mother why it was so bad, she said, ''Oh, Jo-Jo, it's not your fault. You don't have any carpentry genes."

In the decades since that prophetic proclamation, I have learned that while I do not have the carpentry gene, I possess in abundant supply the bald gene, the bad knee gene, the get-lost-on-your-way-to-a-place-you've-never-been-before gene, the bad teeth gene.

For the carpentry geneless, to roam the corridors of the big box home stores is to confront your inadequacies. To visit Hingham Lumber in Cohasset is to have your nose rubbed in it. For Hingham Lumber is ''the Better Builder's Yard."

Boy, are they ever.

There, the Kings and Queens of Construction stride the corridors of home improvement with confidence, greeting the staff like long-lost relatives.

The rest of us are allowed to visit the kingdom, but clearly we'll never be full-fledged citizens.

Along with the swagger that comes from years of craftsmanship, the professionals have their vast collections of tools that give the sad homeowner, with the hand-me-down hickory-handled hammer and the yard-sale tool belt with rusty buckle, a violent case of tool lust.

Then there's the matter of identity.

The sentence builders of this world are allowed to put their names on flimsy business cards that bend in the hand and disintegrate in the rain.

Meanwhile, professional homebuilders have their names hand-painted upon their formidable trucks, shining, rolling billboards for them and their trade.

One can only imagine that when the professional tradespeople were kids, their parents and teachers told them there will always be a job in this world for someone who can build something.

Ain't that the truth.

Globe correspondent Joe Berkeley lives in Hull.